As someone who has been working in communities for a while now, I get asked to speak to students a lot. I also get lots of requests for informational interviews. In the last year, I have spoken to 3 different classes of program evaluation students around the country; presented on 2 student interest panels; and have had many, many individual conversations with students. I always tell students the same six things:
1) The money is at the professional level of your degree. For psychology, that means a PhD; for a social worker, the professional level is an MSW; and for a public health professional, the professional level is usually an MPH. I recognize that money isn’t everything. My own parents did not want me to major in psychology. If you are reading this, like me, social … [Read more...]

Abstract
This article describes many of the competencies used for consulting with communities in the United States. It includes a description of each competency, how each is used, and tips for developing them. The article begins with a definition of community psychology consulting and how it is different from business or other forms of consulting. The different levels of competence and the interdisciplinary nature of the competencies needed for working in communities are discussed. The article maintains that all community psychology consultants need expertise in foundational competencies such as sociocultural and cross- cultural competence and commitment to improving public welfare and social and racial justice. The extent to which community psychology consultants need expertise in … [Read more...]

Sunday, Sheila Robinson, AEA blog coordinator extraordinaire published her weekly blog in honor of Valentine’s Day about evaluators who LOVE evaluation.
Although I didn’t make her list, I LOVE evaluation too and here are five reasons why:
1. I love being out in small communities with community members who are working to make their communities better. It's messy and confusing and sometimes chaotic. I love to help them navigate the confusion, look at their local data and find a way forward that suits them.
2. I love that there is something new to do every day. Nothing ever goes as planned (as hard as we work on evaluation plans) and I kind of love that too.
3. I love when community leaders see us as partners in evaluation rather than outsiders doing evaluation “to them.”
4. I … [Read more...]

Last month, I attended the American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference in Atlanta, GA. This was my first opportunity to attend this annual conference. Conferences like these can be both exhilarating and overwhelming, as you try your hardest to pack as many sessions into your day as possible.
This year’s conference theme was Evaluation + Design, a theme chosen by current AEA president, John Gargani. This got me thinking about the way design is incorporated into our everyday lives when working in evaluation. We design every day; we design evaluations, we design our reports, our data visualizations, data collection measures, etc. Design is something that is present in your everyday life whether or not you realize, and no matter what field you may work in.
Over the course of the … [Read more...]

I have not always worked in evaluation. I have not always focused much of my work on substance abuse prevention. I started out like a lot of young psychology majors; I wanted to be a clinical psychologist so I could ‘help people.’
How I ended up working in the community is a story for another day but to make a long story short, I got burnt out. Two things happened that made me change directions. First, while working as a recovery therapist on an adolescent unit, a fifteen-year-old with an addiction to huffing (paint), died from an overdose 24 hours after her discharge. She was not the only child I knew who died, just the last. The second thing that happened was that I had to fly a fourteen year old mother back to her home state and commit her to the state hospital. Our … [Read more...]

This blog has been rumbling around in my brain for some time now, but a few things have happened lately, prompting me to set deliverables aside momentarily.
Unless you live under a rock, you cannot help but notice that the political world in which we live has become extremely polarized. A true understatement if ever there was one, right? Each party is scrambling as far as they can into their respective corner. The current presidential candidates reflect this fact.
At the 2015 American Evaluation Association (AEA) in Chicago, I heard Sarah Stachowiak of ORS Impact and Julia Coffman and Tanya Beer from the Center for Evaluation Innovation present a session entitled, Developmental Evaluation Tools for Emergent Strategies. They shared an example of a developmental evaluation from the … [Read more...]

By now my fellow American Evaluation Associate (AEA) members are busy writing their proposals for AEA 2016 scheduled to take place here in Atlanta in late October.
Now for those of you who have never visited our fair city, be forewarned – all streets in Atlanta are named Peachtree Street. Just kidding! But there are a LOT of streets with Peachtree in the name. For example, there is Peachtree Street (the main drag) as well as West Peachtree, Peachtree Battle, Peachtree-Dunwoody, Peachtree Road…..Get the idea? If Wikipedia can be trusted, there are in fact 71 roads with Peachtree in the name. If you want a history about all that read on……
Why all this talk about roads? I suppose because deciding which way to go is on my mind these days. Two weeks ago, CES had their first … [Read more...]

When asked to think about major public health issues in developing nations, hunger and starvation may be some of the first things that come to many peoples’ minds. However, hunger isn’t always, or necessarily, the main issue. According to Dr. Geoffery Anguyo, a medical doctor and director of KIHEFO, a healthcare organization in Uganda, malnutrition (in particular, protein deficiency) is a large public health problem in his country. In rural parts of developing countries like Uganda, many families make their living through subsistence farming. Their land may be limited; and they may share with many other family members. Popular crops in Uganda include cabbage, cassava, bananas, plantains, pineapples, sweet potatoes, millet, sorghum, beans and groundnuts. Aside from beans, there is one … [Read more...]

I’m so busy!
When you ask someone how are they doing, how often do they respond with- “I am so busy?”
I bet you get that answer 9 out of 10 times. Now let me ask you, how many times do you offer that same reply when someone asks you that same question?
Lately, I have been too swamped to write this very blog even though it has been rattling around in my head for many months now. I am also behind in writing our company newsletter because I am trying my best to keep up with our tremendous growth. I am not complaining. As Sister Susan Arcaro once quipped to me, “We do this to ourselves.”
Sister Susan is my longtime spiritual director. I started seeing her over 10 years ago during my brief stint at the Archdiocese of Atlanta as head of the Office of Child and Youth … [Read more...]